The creature is the spirochete, Treponema pallidum. This bacteria causes syphilis. The Nobel Laureate is Julius Wagner-Jauregg who discovered a way to treat the lethal form of dementia that develops in the late stages of the disease.
There were only three people who got the right answer. All of them were ineligible. There is no winner this week!
This is another one of those times when there's no "molecule" that provides a clue to a Nobel Laureate. Your task is to identify this creature and the reason why it's important. There are three Nobel Laureates who might be associated with the creature but two of them have already been covered. The last name of the this week's Nobel Laureate does not begin with the letters "E" or "D". Who is it?
The first person to identify the "molecule" and name the Nobel Laureate(s) wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.
There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Markus-Frederik Bohn of the Lehrstuhl für Biotechnik in Erlangen, Germany, Jason Oakley a biochemistry student at the University of Toronto, Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Alex Ling of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska, Linda Zhang, a former student at the University of Toronto who will soon be on her way to graduate school at the University of Hong Kong and Kirill Zaslavsky, a Neuroscience student at the University of Toronto.
Dima, and Bill have agreed to donate their free lunch to an undergraduate. Consequently, I have two extra free lunches for deserving undergraduates. I'm going to award an additional prize to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch. If you can't make it for lunch then please consider donating it to someone who can in the next round.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.
Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.
The importance of this creature is proof of Pastafarianism.
ReplyDeleteI could have won if only I asked my sister Ifylis but she's gone to Korea.
ReplyDeleteSTD humour, an often overlooked icebreaker with the ladies.